it is grad week here at the point, and there are various functions to be attended here and there by faculty and staff or friends of graduates. we happen to know a kid named kennedy from tampa who is graduating and he happened to invite us to a dinner in his honor at the O Club.

 

after securing a sitter (no small feat during grad week -- let me assure you -- especially since we had planned on having grant a little later and therefore assumed, in error, that we’d have grandparents in town for this weekend!) but upon securing said sitter, we began to get all dolled up for the event.

 

that’s where the trouble began.

 

for starters, i needed an outfit to wear in which i could nurse grant. having just had the baby, i am not the size i once was and so my choices are limited. SERIOUSLY limited. as in, i can’t find one, single 2-piece item of clothing that is both dressy-ish AND capable of being worn confidently by me. i have some dresses, but that is it, and of course dresses do not work with nursing in public! and suffice it to say that all that i DO have still makes me feel less than gorgeous when i have it on my person because of the aforementioned size of said person!

 

so preparations for tonight’s event began, first, with me in tears in my closet sobbing about being fat and self-conscious, with poor scott left wondering what on earth to say or do! as usual, he found just the right thing to say to make me feel better! :)

 

but that was only the first of our wardrobe issues.

 

then we had the quandary of what scott ought to wear. this being scott, it was a shock to my system to even consider that we were discussing a wardrobe issue for him. after all, scott NEVER has wardrobe issues, prone as he is to opt for underdressed and unconcerned in all issues of attire every single time! (i could digress here with an example about a snooty hail and farewell cruise with birkenstocks and a wrinkly white shirt in the midst of sport coat clad coworkers, but i’ll skip that rabbit trail!)

 

we were conflicted. was this a uniform event? most events this week are. but which uniform? if the honoree is in blues, then scott should be in blues. but will he wear the bow tie version of the blues or the tie version? (that means two different hats) or should scott go with his greens? often events on post call for that uniform, but since it is being phased out, the cadets don’t even get issued greens anymore. so then should we just go with civilian clothes and be safe? if so, how dressy? coat and tie or just shirt and khakis? it seems so trivial, but if the new grad is in uniform, scott should be too... if this dinner will include his bar-pinning ceremony, then scott definitely should be in uniform. the list of whys goes on and on and we explored every thought on the matter.

 

finally we asked our neighbor because he’s a professor here, so he got the official memo on what to wear this week whereas scott, as a medical, non-teacher guy, did not. he informed us that the official uniform for functions today is blues.

 

so we go with that. blues it is! as we drive down to the O Club, we are feeling pretty confident. everywhere we look, we see dudes in blues.

 

but just in case, i suggested that scott drop me off and i could go in solo. this would not appear odd because i have so recently had a baby and the baby is in a heavy carrier, so it follows that my chivalrous husband would think of my needs first and drop me off at the door while he parked the car. once inside, i could scope things out, and then call him to advise him on what to wear. easy, breezy...

 

so in i go, only to find that our newly lieutenant-ed friend, kennedy, is wearing not blues, not greens, not a uniform of any kind... just khakis and a shirt with no tie. as are all other male guests. bummer... because scott is all decked out in fancy schmancy blues.

 

so i snuck away, placed my call, and scott began to change clothes in the parking lot... just as kennedy walked up to his car right beside our van! ha!

 

as scott tried to be quick on his feet and get the van moved before being spotted, he discovered that the key fob was stuck in his pocket in such manner that he couldn’t easily remove it. a full minute of fumbling around to extricate the keys from his pocket and he was finally free to move the van to a spot farther away from view... hopefully before kennedy spotted him in his super dressy duds!

 

blues were flying everywhere, a fact i discovered upon arrival back at the van a couple hours later. a tie there, a hat here, coat thrown there, pants over here. too funny!

 

but eventually scott joined me at the club with a funny look on his face. he’d brought all the possible uniform options -- hats, ties, etc. -- as well as civilian clothes... but he forgot his belt. so he had to sort of blouse out his shirt to conceal that fact, making my baby-faced husband look the part, not of a 33-year-old father of three, but a little like a college sophomore going to a frat party!

 

and the reason he’d seen kennedy in the parking lot was that he was heading to the car to get his blue sport coat. so when i had called scott with my “kennedy’s wearing khakis and a shirt” information, i had not mentioned a coat... because he wasn’t wearing one... but by the time scott arrived, he was! ha, again!

 

so even with all our preparations for all the possible wardrobe options, we were STILL thwarted in the end by the omission of a belt and the leaving of a sport coat in the car.

 

but at least scott didn’t look like a total idiot, showing up to a not-so-formal event decked out in his as-formal-as-it-gets uniform! thank heaven for my skills as a spy.

 

we did have a blast... and as i mentioned, scott is nearly always completely unconcerned about clothing issues, so once it was all said and done, he actually ceased to care if he was the only dude without a coat or a belt on. but it did make for a laugh or two as we recalled all the drama leading up to the event and our nifty plan to make me the “what not to wear” spy at the West Point O Club!